Saying he always wanted to think outside the box, Nicolas Cage premiered his directorial debut "Sonny," a seedy new film about prostitutes and drugs, Saturday night in Culbreth Theatre.
"This is the first time in the United States that 'Sonny' has been shown," Cage told a sold-out audience at the 15th Annual Virginia Film Festival before premiering what he called his "baby."
"Sonny," set to be released in December, stars James Franco ("Spiderman," "James Dean") in the title role, playing a former male prostitute recently discharged from the military, setting out to restart his life with a new career.
Brenda Blethyn ("Secrets and Lies," "Little Boys") stars as his pimp mother, and Mena Suvari ("American Beauty") plays the part of Sonny's love interest Carol. Harry Dean Stanton plays Suvari's companion.
The film portrays much internal turmoil in Sonny and his desire to establish a normal life in a new place. His efforts, however, are thwarted when he cannot get a job and is forced to rely on his old occupation as a prostitute.
After the showing, Roger Ebert, a film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and a regular guest of the festival, interviewed Cage.
"You walk down the street and you feel like only the architecture is protecting you from sin," Ebert said of the film's setting on New Orleans' Bourbon Street in 1981.
Ebert and Cage both identified "Sonny" as a pivotal point in Cage's career, now as "an actor and a director," as Cage put it, comparing himself to Orson Wells.
Dressed in a sleek black suit and a white open-collared shirt, Cage introduced the movie and afterward discussed the background of the film with Ebert.
Sonny is "an extreme character in an extreme situation," Cage said. He added he would have played the role had he not been too old.
Instead of playing Sonny, Cage made a cameo appearance as a crack addict who runs a male whorehouse.
The merit in setting "Sonny" in New Orleans is that it is "a city without judgment," Cage said. He described the characters in the film as "deeply flawed people" who are not judged for their actions, except when trying to get a job.
After the screening, Cage attended the movie's after-party for two hours, allowing many fans to have their pictures taken with him, giving autographs, and even taking a turn on the dance floor.
John Carlen, who wrote "Sonny," composed the story while taking screenplay classes in prison. However, there were conflicts over authorship when a fellow inmate of Carlen's claimed he wrote the story.
The original script set the story in the 1960s, but Cage moved the date up 20 years because of his familiarity with the 1980s.
Ebert called the script a "raw and challenging screenplay."
Because of drug use and sexual content, the MPAA gave the film an "R" rating.
While watching the movie along with the audience, Cage said he was surprised the Culbreth Theatre crowd reacted differently than he expected. Everybody laughed at scenes he had not thought were funny, and to his delight, also expressed amusement at those he found humorous.
He said that every audience has a "mass consciousness," reading off each other's emotions and thus reacting the same. As an actor he said he usually does not have the opportunity to feel what the audience feels, but in this case he did, which he enjoyed.
Cage said the project allowed him to do something honest and sincere, the type of project that allows him to sleep at night.
During the interview, Ebert avoided excessive discussion of "Sonny." Instead, he and Ebert discussed many of his past films and their degrees of success.
Cage added that he would be available during the screening as well.
"If any of you need anything, I'll be the guy in the back having a panic attack, [be]cause I just quit smoking," he said.
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